Which disk imaging program?

If version 3 includes deactivation it will be technically possible to install SP,
make a snapshot copy, deactivate the snapshot copy, make an empty snapshot and install SP to that.

1) will this work ? it does with some other activations ?
2) will this be acceptable to StorageCraft ?

I still dislike activation ans being just one more thing to go wrong. I either don't like a piece of software and don't use it or I like it a pay for the number of copies I use. I have numerous programs that I have paid for each copy even though there is nothing to stop me just using the one copy. Am I the only idiot
who pays for multiple copies - even when I don't have to ? I doubt it. Activation still only applies to a minority of programs. Many still exist and thrive without activation - letting the quality of the product bring in the sales.

 

see post #57 version 3 to have deactivation -- like Paperport. I haven't tried
but I can see no reason why I couldn't install multiple copies of Paperport using FD-ISR ( can think of no good reason why I would want to) I would simply install PP to a snap shot, and then copy that snapshot and deactivate the first getting my activation allowance back.

 

Thank you for this Unfortunately on my dial up the download from that website kept on failing but in the end I managed to find it elsewhere on the web. And the MD5 check verified.

I have had only a brief play with this but it looks like it may replace ATI version 9.0. Last year I had to change from my old and trusty PQDI (never considered buying a later version after the firm was bought up my Semantic which has a reputation for screwing up any product they get their hands on) because it refused to work with my new laptop that has a SATA HDD.

Initially I thought Acronis was not going to work either (had bought a copy about a year earlier but was not very impressed with it: when one does a restore ATI compacts all the data from the start of the partition, nice if you want to defragment but to me it is indicative that it is not a "True Image").

Then I discovered that I had to "wait" for about a minute - minute and a half before ATI would recognise my HDD. Have been using it for just under a year (no real alternative, did not investigate much more and needed to have the environment up and running) and recently bought a Seagate external "portable" HDD (2.5", 120GB). That is when trouble started in earnest with ATI. One moment it would fail to back up, another moment it would fail to restore whereas the verify would work, then it would fail to restore and I woudl do a verify and then the restore would work. In other words it became totally unreliable.

The only negative thing that I managed to find is: When booting from the CD Paragon runs on my machine very slow and takes a long time to restore. (I do this occasionally when I suspect some nasty has gotten in my machine and then I just wipe the whole HDD and reformat it in another filesystem (e.g. Linux or so) before doing a restore. ) Have not investigated this further, it may well be that there is somewhere some trick to make this go faster. (perhaps changing the HDD compatibility in the BIOS?)

On the positive side I like that I can restore the MBR (needed that once many years ago) and that the partition image is a clone: it gets restored to the same location (at least that is what it looks like when I start the Windows defragment).

The link was a wonderfull opportuntiy to have a play with this software. Knowing what I know now would make me not hesistate one moment and go out and buy Paragon.

 

Having read this discussion on the reactivation already made me move away from evaluating your product (and many other products, have been caught too often with similar scheme's): on average I restore several times a week on the same computer. There is a very valid reason for this: I am running it without any real time malware protection.

This is because I am a trader and no way can I afford any nasties on the machine for a) perfomance reason and b) privacy reason.

The need to run without any malware detecting software real time comes because I run my laptop HARD, at times for extended periods close to the limit what the machine can cope with (with dangers of overheating and thermal shutdown - I monitor the temperature real time) and all kind of tricks have been done to maximise performance. I have even impemented extra setps to improve the internal cooling. (this is a laptop we are talking about)

When I do browsing (by necessity to get more info on some companies, market announcements etc) I do this from within Sandboxie and I am running Ghostwall in addition to monitor the outgoing traffic. As lightweight an installation as I can make it.

If I buy a software product then I want to have it under my control not under some vendors control who more than likely is not able to give me the support that I need when I need it. (I travel a lot and when the machine is down then I cannot use it to contact the vendor can I? Not even speaking of the time essence . . . Every minute counts big $$$.$$$,- for me)

I do understand the vendor's paranoia with piracy and it is very prevalent in some countries that I visit. However the people in those countries (more often than not) are lacking the the income to pay for your product. Understand me correctly, I used to be a software and hardware architect and know exactly where you are coming from. Neither am I bashing you or your product but I just want to state that there are a lot of people who will not post in a forum like this why they are not evaluating your product. (in other words the previous poster is not the only one with issues)

best,
L

 

Can also use robocopy (with some scripts) and encapsulate the private data in a container like created by TrueCrypt. It makes ithe backup portable too: I spend close to 6 years developping something and whenever I cannot carry my machine with me I carry the USB key with all my stuff on it. Encrypted and (hopefully) safe. (loosing the data due to theft, fire or whatever other reason). That simple USB key probably holds for over 1M USD in value....

 

Not if you have a business bulk license.

 

I am in the same category - I may trial something (like now with Paragon) and if I like it then I will pay for it. I frequent countries where they'll use any excuse to confiscate your machine (it may represent more value to them than their annual income) and illegal software is one sure reason. The other is having images of scantily clad person (or not clad at all ) but not every person is into collecting those pictures.

 

Then I discovered that I had to "wait" for about a minute - minute and a half before ATI would recognise my HDD. Have been using it for just under a year (no real alternative, did not investigate much more and needed to have the environment up and running) and recently bought a Seagate external "portable" HDD (2.5", 120GB). That is when trouble started in earnest with ATI. One moment it would fail to back up, another moment it would fail to restore whereas the verify would work, then it would fail to restore and I woudl do a verify and then the restore would work. In other words it became totally unreliable.[quote Leonardo]

I can imagine how you throw up your hands at the moment the restore failed knowing that you verified nice.So better to know beforehand and do a restore immediate after a backup is taken.As the saying goes "THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING "!! So check your verification by immediate restore,i know it sounds ridiculious but nothing is perfect.

 

That's true, but I see more and more softwares with activation and certainly the recent developped ones.
They all create their own Activation Code, which has nothing to do with hardware identification and that Activation Code is stored on your harddisk and will be compared with the Activation Code that the company received from you during the first installation of their software.
If you lose that Activation Code on your harddisk due to formatting or zeroing your harddisk and you re-install the software, the company will consider this wrongly as piracy and it's upto you to explain them that it is not piracy and hopefully, they will believe you and re-activate the software.

At Wilders, I've read often that users reformat or zero their harddisk, just to be sure that all infections are gone, before they re-install Windows and other softwares and that removes all activation codes from your harddisk and then you have to write begging-emails to all these companies to install your paid softwares.
Alot of people won't like this, because that is a serious restriction of your freedom to do whatever you want with your computer. I'm already scared to re-install my computer.
I have already 3 softwares with activation on my only computer : WinXPproSP2, ShadowProtect and Alcohol120% and 2 of them caused already activation problems. I was interested in a new software and during the trial installation, I noticed an activation code. I'm not going to buy it.
Suppose you have 10-15 of these softwares. How much time are you going to spend just for re-activating them, if you want to re-install your computer ?
What about 5 years later, when you buy a new computer to replace the old one. Will these companies still believe you or even willing to re-activate their software. What do they know about what happens at your place.
If they don't believe you, you will have to re-buy the software, because they will assume your old computer is still there and your new computer is the second computer and that means another license.
You have to think a litte further than just today. I see all kinds of problems on long term.

 

Not feeling that happy about talk of activation issues (although I understand the need for it, but maybe should be better designed) I thought I would go back and have another look at that little (248KB) backup program Drive Snapshot, and compare it to my usual software - Paragon.
Surely such a tiny program couldnt be:-

a) reliable
b) work at all,
c) get anywhere near the performance of an established "Big Company" program.
d) be usable to an "average" sort of person without thoroughly studying the manual for hours and then giving up in horror.
e) Instill ANY sort of confidence in what it was doing,
f) Be even in the same league as SP, having heard about SPs excellent speed and versatility.

Well......... its actually quite astonishing in what in can do, its speed, and seemingly, its no fuss, no frills way of doing things. It just WORKS!

All results are imaging the system drive to another partition on the same HD, so lots of reading/writing. (Only did this for this test)

I imaged my system drive with 3 FDISR snapshots on it Total size 27.5 Gb. in Windows.

DS took 13m.20s on my machine. Created an image of 14.6 Gb.

Paragon DB 8.5 took 27mins. (Setting Fastest with little compression) Created an image of 22.7Gb.


Restoring:- Used UBCD4Win cd for both applications. Times are taken AFTER booting to the cd.

DS took 13.5 mins

Paragon took 22 mins.

Both restored perfectly, but if I was to choose which software had that "feel good" factor, it has to be DS.
The very fact that to view the files inside the image is just a double click is really something. None of your "Volume Explorers" or "Mount Image" etc. It just opens the image like any other file. (To be fair it does actually mount the image as Drive Z, but it is so unobtrusive you don't notice it)

Don't know what to say really. Still waiting for the catch, which there must surely be from a program this small. If there isn't a catch, then it makes you wonder why all this other software is so bloated. Ok so it's not that pretty to look at, but unlike some other "small company" software I found it very user friendly and straight forward to use.

Ken

 

Hey kenneyboy,
myself i use paragon since its easy to use and reliable.
the only downside to paragon is the speed.
shadow protect desktop is faster at creating images than paragon.
i have contacted paragon and told them the only issue i have it the speed of creating an image is on the slow side.
looking at the screenshots of drive snapshot at there website the interface looked very basic and definatly not for newbies.
lodore

 

As I said it really isnt pretty but everything is quite simple to use. Probaly not for complete newbies, but maybe ok for Eriks Housewives........

I think the thing that surprised me most was the restore time of DS. I expected it to be VERY slow using the UBCD4Win.

 

According my tests, ShadowProtect has the fastest full backup.
I've tested Paragon, Acronis, Norton and a few others, I don't remember.
Of course SP's activation spoiled it for me, not convinced I improved myself this time.

 

So far as with the test of Kenny,SP is far superiour in terms of speed and IMO as reliable as you can get.Only nagging thingy is activation but i can live with that because i image from the CD. I am not a corporate user.

 

Yes that is the only good point of SP : the Recovery CD keeps on working.
Unfortunately, not every software with activation is an image backup software.
Now back to my other problem : the Roswell Incident.

 

U mean the aliens from outerspace,IMHO the first spaceship in history has to be landed of yet.

 

"IF" that works and avoids a begging-email to SP, then I don't have a problem with SP anymore. Un-installing and re-installing software was never a problem for me. As long I don't need someone else, everything is OK with me.

 

@Peter

I did read the whole tread but did miss that, sorry to hear but must say not surprising or unexpected.

I find that the combination of functionality and price have a lot to do with the success of a product. These days the cost of software easily outstrips the cost of hardware and it are those "little" programs that eat it up.

XP and Office are normally in one form or another "bundled" with hardware (at least if you buy from a reputable firm. I used to have Toshiba but but moved to IBM thinkpads) and if you have the OEM installed software then you have no MSN activation issues.

Joe Bloggs down the street does not use any substantial backup / recovery software, even I have difficulty convincing my brother and my children making backups religiously. Their resasoning: Has MSN not built in some "restore" and is there not some "hidden" partition from which you can do a restore? In which case all you have to do is just reinstall some other software? Then there is always the other humain trait: most need first to experience a serious software meltdown of their system before thaty take backup and recovery serious. Even then some do not take it serious because they change their browsing habits, get some anti-malware software and that keeps them out of trouble for a while. They really see the PC as a commodity item and when it runs out of the box they won't make many changes to the software install. Backups, what's that? Something for geeks and paranoids? LOL.

Some years ago backup and recovery software / functionality was not a part of the OEM / MSN offerings and that may well have an influence on sales.

I may venture that if price is lower then you may well find that a lot more will buy it because they would not like to take the chance of downloading something from a dubious site that may well be infected with some malware. Perhaps a deal has to be struck with an OEM? I do not know, I am out of the software / hardware business but I do see that the landscape has changed a lot since I left the industry.

However activation in a backup / recovery environment is not something that I want to have in my environment.

I normally replace my machines at approx 8 - 12 months but if not then I replace my HDD every 12 months. Studies by Google have shown a peak of HDD failures around 18 months. Either the HDD will fail early or around that period and then the failure rate will taper off again. I may have a warranty but you really think that I am going to send a HDD with my sensitive stuff back to a vendor? LOL some would give a small fortune to even have a glimpse at one of my screenshots, no sir, the HDD get destroyed properly.

Can only commiserate because you are right: we as a user are ultimately the losers.

Peace
L.